politics for the 99%

A push to make America’s banks safer creates new uncertainties – Published on The Economist, Dec 14, 2013.

The 37 words inserted into the 848-page Dodd-Frank law overhauling the regulation of America’s financial institutions seemed innocent enough. Lawmakers wanted regulators to come up with strictures that would prevent banks from gambling with deposits insured by the federal government. The resulting rule, named after a prominent proponent, Paul Volcker, a former head of the Federal Reserve, prohibits banks from “proprietary trading”, meaning transactions conducted purely for their own gain, rather than to serve clients. On December 10th five different regulatory agencies approved the Volcker rule; it will come into force, awkwardly enough, on April 1st. 

During the three years between its conception and birth, the rule has grown into something much bigger and more complicated than its origins would have suggested. The final version boasts 963 pages, and contains 2,826 footnotes as well as 1,347 questions. (Much of this is a preamble addressing public comments, but that will nonetheless serve as guidance for the rule’s implementation.)

The immediate impact of all this verbiage will be small. America’s biggest banks had already eliminated the most obvious forms of proprietary trading in anticipation of the rule. Their share prices rose slightly after its release, perhaps out of relief that it was not as burdensome as some had expected.

By June large banks must begin reporting some data; full compliance with the rule is not required until July 21st 2015. The rule aims not just to curb risk-taking directly, but to enhance monitoring of it too. Bosses will have to sign statements attesting to the existence of compliance schemes, although not to compliance itself—the kind of carefully constructed arrangement that underscores how very conscious bank executives are of risk, if only on their own account, as it were.

The final rule could have been more onerous than it was. An earlier draft had proposed prohibiting banks from buying securities unless they knew that their clients wanted to buy them. In effect, this would have prevented “market-making”, whereby banks keep a supply of securities on hand, so that they can sell them to a customer on demand, or buy them from one even when they do not have another client lined up to pass them on to.

Without the liquidity banks provide in this way, pension funds and insurers would find it harder, more time-consuming and more expensive to buy and sell bonds and other financial instruments. The rule alleviates this worry somewhat by allowing banks to buy securities to meet “reasonably expected” demand from customers.

In practice banks will probably respond by making markets for a narrow range of securities that already trade frequently, and thus might reasonably be expected to do so in future. Meanwhile, the securities that now change hands less frequently are likely to be shunned, making them even harder to trade. Government bonds are exempted from these rules, so banks may pile into them, although they are currently trading at unusually high prices, and so are far from risk-free … //

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(Volcker Rule on en.wikipedia …  is a specific section of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act originally proposed by American economist and former United States Federal Reserve (FED) Chairman Paul Volcker to restrict United States banks from making certain kinds of speculative investments that do not benefit their customers.[1] Volcker argued that such speculative activity played a key role in the financial crisis of 2007–2010. The rule is often referred to as a ban on proprietary trading by commercial banks, whereby deposits are used to trade on the bank’s own accounts, although a number of exceptions to this ban were included in the Dodd-Frank law.[2][3] The rule’s provisions were scheduled to be implemented as a part of Dodd-Frank (Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act) on July 21, 2012,[4] with preceding ramifications,[5] but were delayed. The necessary agencies have approved regulations implementing the rule, which is scheduled to go into effect April 1, 2014[6] …).

Links:

Front End Loader Dreams, on Dissident Voice, by subMedia, December 12, 2013;

European Parliament: Snowden Will Make Video Appearance, on Spiegel Online International, by Gregor Peter Schmitz, December 12, 2013: Leaders in the European Parliament have agreed to allow NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to answer questions by video, despite efforts by some conservative parliamentarians to block the testimony out of fear it could further harm trans-Atlantic relations …;

Rank hypocrisy: WTO deal bows to wealth, squashes the poor, on Intrepid Report, by Jon Queally, December 12, 2013: US and EU called out for protecting their own subsidies while demanding world’s poorest citizens be pushed back into starvation;

Dog-eat-Dog Smile: The Twenty Percent Want their Money and Cake, Too, on Dissident Voice, by Paul Haeder, Dec 11, 2013;

The aftermath of Occupy: Naomi Colvin at TEDxHousesofParliament, 12.13 min, uploaded by TEDx Talks, July 30, 2012: Naomi Colvin is a London-based writer and activist. She has been involved with the Occupy movement since the beginning of October 2011.